We have updated the indicator “population, total” so that it covers all countries and territories from 1800 to 2008. Population is by default used for the size of the bubbles in Gapminder World.
With “all countries and territories” we mean all the 192 UN-member plus 61 other entities (e.g. semi-autonomous territories, former countries and disputed territories). This gives a total of 253 countries and territories.
This work rests heavily on the work of Angus Maddison and is, to our knowledge, the most complete data set for population, containing over 20.000 observations. To the extent possible, we have also included meta-data for each observation with information on sources and estimation methods. Where possible, we have also included a quality rating of the observations, of which more of in the following blog-post.
Note: some of the observations, especially the earlier ones, are based on very rough estimates or extrapolations. Please check the data quality rating of the observations, described in the next blog-post.
